CORKAGE06_304_cl.JPG
Photo to illustrate how restauranteurs are fed up with patrons bringing in their own wines rather than buying off the list.
Craig Lee / The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT

When Craig Stoll decided to prohibit diners from bringing their own wines into his Pizzeria Delfina, he didn't think he was doing anything newsworthy.

Was he ever wrong.

Just ask the angry pack of wine-toting customers huddled on the sidewalk outside Stoll's San Francisco pizzeria on a Friday night after they were told they'd have to leave their bottles at the door.

Sure, it's just a pizza place, and with a very reasonably priced wine list. Yet the backlash that ensued when Pizzeria Delfina opened in July 2005 with its don't-bring-your-own-bottle policy shows that the ability to take one's own wine into Bay Area restaurants has become as commonplace -- and accepted -- as sharing plates. It also spotlighted the dilemma restaurateurs face when they create their BYOB policies -- and few Bay Area restaurants don't allow the practice.

Restaurants charge what's called a "corkage" fee to open and serve the wines brought in by patrons, but corkage doesn't make up for lost sales from the restaurants' wine lists, or the resources it takes to pour customers' wines. BYOB also shows a disregard, restaurateurs say, for the wine program they have carefully crafted to match their cuisine and atmosphere.

While it's up to individual restaurateurs to set their corkage fees -- or as Pizzeria Delfina has done, ban corkage altogether -- the ambiguity of corkage policies has created heated debate among restaurateurs and their customers.

For some consumers, taking a bottle to dinner might be considered a necessity; high markups and/or limited wine list selections encourage them to bring wine from home. The amount they pay for this privilege -- usually between $15 and $25 in the Bay Area -- is often less than the amount spent ordering from the list.

Yet there's another side.

"I just don't understand what the whole fuss is about," Stoll says. "We're working really hard at putting our wine program together. It's our package, our vision. The program is part of the restaurant, like a painting on the wall or the food on your plate. I don't understand why people feel so entitled to bring their own.

"What if you collected fine tablecloths from all over the world, and you don't ever cook at home so you wanted to bring one in to eat off of? It's ridiculous."

It's also a sentiment echoed by other restaurateurs, who say they spend countless hours and dollars developing wine programs, purchasing and replacing crystal stemware and decanters, investing in temperature-controlled storage, hiring and training wine-service staff and keeping a well-regarded sommelier.

For Bay Area folks, however, it seems natural that with Wine Country in their backyard, and wine being an important part of dining, they should be able to enjoy a bottle at dinner without paying an enormous price for it.

Hal Oates, who runs the online wine shop www.porthos.com, sells to collectors all over the country. He says his customers are "jealous of those of us in California who can bring our wine to restaurants," as it's illegal to do so in some states. For him, taking his own wine to dinner has become so routine that he first chooses the bottle, then decides where to eat.

Echoes Alder Yarrow, author of the wine blog Vinography.com, "Bringing in a special bottle to share with friends over dinner is one of the great pleasures of the wine connoisseur, and great pleasures tend to mean good things for those in the hospitality business."

But it's no longer just about special bottles.

Just ask Lance Cutler, a "commander" of Sonoma-based Wine Patrol, an organization that, among other things, lobbies against expensive restaurant wine.

In an e-mail, he writes, "It used to be that most people who brought wine to restaurants were bringing 'special' bottles to open at special dinners, celebrating birthdays, anniversaries and the like ... As restaurant wine prices shot into the stratosphere, more and more customers started bringing bottles in an attempt to keep their dinner bills within the national budget. It was a type of financial self-defense."

Most consumers' consternation comes from what they believe to be greedy markups. Yet Napa wine consultant Ronn Wiegand, publisher of the newsletter Restaurant Wine, says wines sold at restaurants have the same markup as food.

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Restaurants typically mark up wines between 2 and 3 times, meaning a bottle that the restaurant pays $10 for will land on the wine list at around $25, translating into $15 profit. At the higher end, however, there is a sliding scale. While the markup percentage isn't always as high on more expensive wines, the dollar amount -- the profit -- is usually greater.

These percentages are similar to food markups -- except that with wine, Wiegand says, there is a much greater range in pricing.

"The sky is the limit as to how much someone will spend," he says.

Some diners don't hestitate to buy a $200 bottle of Bordeaux, yet would never consider dropping $200 on a steak.

Corkage fees and the escalating prices of wines at restaurants feed the belief that restaurants are doing just fine on beverage sales.

As a result, it's almost as common for diners to bring a $7.99 bottle of Chardonnay from Safeway as it is for them to bring an '88 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild. And why not? In most cases, paying corkage is still less expensive than buying off the list.

"It's gotten to the point that if I don't bring my own wine, I don't have much of a selection," says commercial real estate agent David DonHowe, who travels frequently between San Francisco and New York. "I usually have only a few bottles on the lower end of the spectrum to choose from."

Many restaurateurs say it's a vicious cycle -- the more wines people bring in, the fewer they're buying off the list. Without the income from wine sales, prices stay high and corkage fees climb.

Most consumers, restaurateurs claim, don't realize that those who bring in vast amounts of wine to be opened can be a major strain on their business plan.

"This is a huge, huge issue for me," says Richard Reddington, whose Redd restaurant in Yountville opened to much acclaim in November 2005. Due to the many vintners in Wine Country, BYOB is a particular problem for Napa and Sonoma county restaurateurs.

Reddington is not ungrateful -- his restaurant is full nightly and has a large local following. He acknowledges and appreciates his good fortune -- "I love being a local hangout; these are my friends," he says.

But "local" and "friend" often mean vintner, or a wine collector with a 15,000-bottle cellar. Reddington would like to waive corkage for his friends, but it becomes difficult when they bring bottles into Redd by the dozen.

"In an average night, I'll do 150 covers (dinners), which means I'm opening about 70 bottles of wine," says Reddington. "Thirty to 35 of those are corkage. Sometimes we'll open 20 bottles with corkage before 6:30 p.m."

For Reddington, making money back from lost wine sales is an uphill battle.

"When you write a budget," he says, "you think wine is going to represent a big chunk of your revenue. When it doesn't, the numbers don't make sense. I had no idea when I was putting the restaurant together that the amount of wine brought in would be this out of hand."

He adds that if he made money only on food sales, he'd have to do more than 200 covers a night to stay profitable. That's a huge leap for his 65-seat restaurant.

Reddington says two people dining together at Redd can spend anywhere from $80 to $400 on a meal; the amount depends largely on whether they order wine, bring in their own bottle and pay the $25 corkage fee, or skip wine altogether.

It's a similar situation all over Wine Country.

Press in St. Helena, another recent addition to the Napa Valley dining scene, charges $20 corkage, but waives it for local vintners who bring in their own wine. Press general manager Stefan Matulich says that policy offends local residents who aren't vintners and don't get the same treatment.

"People seem to think corkage fees should apply only to tourists," he says.

"It's a funny little dance we do," says Kenneth Goldfine, general manager of Syrah restaurant in Santa Rosa. "On the one hand, we don't want to offend or lose our customers. Our policy was designed to allow people to bring in a special bottle."

Now, he says, many patrons bring in bottles (and pay $15 corkage) that they've picked up at wineries and wine shops -- wines, he says, that are comparable to those on Syrah's list.

"It really undercuts our business model," he says.

Not all restaurateurs have this concern.

Bobby Stuckey, a master sommelier and former wine director at French Laundry in Yountville, left to open a restaurant in Boulder, Colo., where state law prohibits patrons from bringing in wine. He says the law works in everyone's favor, in terms of both price and selection.

"I mark my wines up only $20 above retail, no matter if it's $15 or $500 to begin with, and I can afford to do it because people support my wine list," he says.

Stuckey argues that the profit restaurants make on wine-list purchases allows them not only to keep prices lower, but also to amass interesting collections.

"Walk into a restaurant in any wine-growing region, like Burgundy or Alsace, where they don't allow corkage," he says, "and you're going to find some great, affordable wines with a lot of age on them."

Stuckey says lists with multiple vintages of a particular wine are harder to find in Northern California, because consumers can bring in their own aged wines. That makes it difficult for restaurants to cellar the good stuff -- they're not rewarded for doing so.

He also says the solution isn't to raise corkage fees, because those who can afford to bring in great wines aren't concerned about the cost of opening them.

"The average consumer thinks it's in their best interest to have corkage, but it's not true," he says. "It really only helps the people with a lot of money, because they're the ones who want to bring in something from their cellar."

Stuckey says he believes most diners don't have the opportunity to drink listed wines that are both affordable and mature because restaurants can't afford to buy and store them for years. If they do, they have to charge an astronomical amount.

So is the solution to ban BYOB altogether? It seems to work in Colorado, according to Stuckey.

Still, Stoll knows that while he can defend his pizzeria's no-BYOB policy -- most wines on the list are priced under what a corkage fee would cost -- his policy of charging $18 corkage per bottle at the more formal Delfina restaurant next door will remain. He sees an ocean of wine brought in each night, and that frustrates him.

Other San Francisco restaurants, including Fifth Floor, are trying more creative approaches to the corkage conundrum. After experiencing problems with a set $30 corkage fee, Emily Wines, sommelier at Fifth Floor, installed a graduated corkage policy that she says makes everyone happy.

The first bottle a patron brings in costs $20 to open; the second is an additional $40, the third an additional $60, and so on. Thus, someone bringing in six bottles will be charged $420.

"It means that when people have multiple bottles, it can be a hefty corkage, but on the first bottle, it offers a break to someone if they just have one special wine," she says.

At Boulevard in San Francisco, sommelier John Lancaster has a $25 corkage fee and a two-bottle limit.

"It happened because we were watching as people brought in cases of wine," he says.

On an average Saturday night, Lancaster says, he and his staff will open as many as 25 bottles brought in by diners, and that the number keeps increasing.

Bay Wolf in Oakland might open as many as five to seven bottles a night that weren't sold off the list. At the new Alexander's Steakhouse in Cupertino, manager and server Tim Halsted says patrons continually bring in their own wines. Though the restaurant charges $20 corkage for the first two bottles, the fee goes up if many bottles are opened.

"It's hard," says Halsted, "because when parties bring in a lot of wine, it takes us away from other tables."

Though Bay Area restaurant staffers witness a mass of bottles being brought in, it doesn't compare to what's happening in Wine Country. Reddington and others say that the amount of wine coming into Napa and Sonoma restaurants is excessive, and it has become difficult to determine who gets charged a corkage fee and who doesn't.

Restaurants count on referral business from wineries, so when vintners come to dine, it's become common courtesy to waive their corkage fees. And that results in lost income.

"I have investors that I need and want to pay back," Reddington says. "How do I make up the profit?"

For starters, restaurants can charge higher corkage fees. Reddington's original fee of $15 -- with frequent comps for industry friends -- wasn't cutting it, so he raised it to $25, with a two-bottle limit. While he will comp corkage on one bottle for each bottle purchased, the policy applies to all, including the mayor of Yountville. He still loses money when diners don't purchase wine off the list and admits it's a struggle.

"I'll get someone in here who says, 'I waived your tasting fee when you came into the tasting room,' " he says. "But if I waive corkage for a table of vintners, it's like giving them 50 percent off their meal."

Down the street at French Laundry, corkage isn't as much of an issue. Though chef/owner Thomas Keller struggled for years to figure out a good system, he now has one that -- for the meantime -- works. Though it might be in line with the esteemed restaurant's stratospheric pricing, the corkage fee is double Redd's.

French Laundry wine director Paul Roberts doesn't see a problem with the corkage practice. He's happy to open wine brought into the restaurant as long as it's not already on the list. Yet he believes the $50 fee is necessary to generate a profit.

"I don't get why people look at it in a confrontational manner," says Roberts. "We're simply providing a service."

Roberts didn't flinch when a group walked in with two cases of wine for a tasting. The corkage charge was $1,200.

But if Reddington sees similar numbers of wines brought into Redd and is making only half the income, is it enough?

"All that corkage really covers is the 12 glasses that get ruined every night," he says. "We broke a $100 decanter the other night, and there's your corkage."

On the flip side, there are vintners selling their wines to restaurants at wholesale prices, only to see the wine marked up two to three times the retail price on a wine list. What's a vintner to do if he or she wants to pour a wine for someone over a meal -- buy it off the list, or bring it in and pay corkage?

Few vintners say they don't bring wine into a restaurant. Most expect to pay corkage.

"There's a very symbiotic relationship between Napa wineries and restaurants," says Garen Staglin, owner of Staglin Family Vineyards in Rutherford. "We've created this relationship by sending customers and bringing distributors to restaurants, and there's a tremendous amount of reciprocity."

Yet he understands that wine sales keep a restaurant afloat.

"Restaurants deserve a corkage," he says. They have to stay in business."

Don Stephens, proprietor of D.R. Stephens Estate, agrees. Stephens divides his time between his real estate business in San Francisco and his St. Helena winery, so he's constantly eating out.

"The times I go to a restaurant and don't bring my own wine is one out of 20," he says. "But I also expect to pay for it."

Stephens says that unless he's specifically working on a sale of a current vintage, he won't bring his own wine into a restaurant that carries it.

Michael Ouellette, owner of Blockheadia Winery in St. Helena and also a consultant who previously worked as a wine director for Napa Valley restaurants, including Mustards Grill and Budo, says it's ultimately the responsibility of vintners to pay corkage, but not everyone agrees. When he started as managing partner and wine director at Martini House in St. Helena in 2001, Ouellette decided he would find a system that could work for everyone.

"I thought, 100 percent no exclusions, everyone will pay corkage," he says. "But I'd do something to soften the blow."

That meant donating a portion of the corkage proceeds to charity, specifically the Napa Valley Farmworker Housing Authority, an organization that provides housing for the migrant workers who tend the vines.

"The hostility that I got back was shocking," says Ouellette. "People were completely taken aback that I was charging corkage."

These days, however, most California enophiles realize that they're lucky to be able to bring wine into a restaurant in the first place -- at whatever cost.

"Let's be clear," says Ouellette. "Just because you have a well-priced list doesn't mean you won't have an army bringing in wine."

Adds Reddington, "Half the time people come in, they don't even open the wine list."

While each sommelier or restaurateur has his or her own notion of what works, they agree that mutual respect is the key.

For restaurateurs, that might mean waiving corkage on one bottle brought in for each bottle purchased from the list. According to Yarrow, "Such a policy is an indication that the folks running the place value their wine-loving customers."

And for patrons, it's about focusing on special bottles, and showing support for those who spend time and money putting together interesting wine programs.

Reddington says, "The last thing I want to do is piss off my customers. The wine and food pairing clientele is my customer base. I just want them to understand that a beverage program is a big part of a restaurant."

At some point, Ouellette says, people will feel that they're better off buying the wine and trying the program than bringing in their own bottles.

And there's always the Stuckey school of thought: "If corkage was illegal," he says, excitement building in his voice, "18 months from now, the Bay Area would have the most rocking wine scene on the planet."

Wishful thinking, Bobby.

Sampling corkage policies

It's increasingly difficult to find a restaurant with a fee of less than $10 to $15, but more and more, restaurants are adopting the "one for one" policy: Purchase one bottle off the restaurant list and corkage is waived on one bottle that you bring in ("one for one"). Many are trying to limit the amount of bottles being brought in by setting a two-bottle limit. Some offer free corkage nights to bring in business.

Bottom line: it's up to the restaurateur to find a corkage policy that makes the most sense for the restaurant.

Here is a random sampling of restaurant corkage policies from the San Francisco Bay Area through wine country.

Campton Place (San Francisco) -- Graduated corkage policy: The first bottle is $30, the second $40, the third $50 and so on.

Chow (San Francisco and Lafayette) -- $7.50 per bottle.

Christopher's Nothing Fancy Café (Berkeley) -- No corkage fee.

Dry Creek Kitchen (Healdsburg) -- Free corkage on first two bottles brought in bearing a Sonoma label. Each additional bottle is $15.

Michael Mina (San Francisco) -- $35 per bottle, two bottle limit. The restaurant won't accept wines that are already on the list.

PlumpJack Restaurants -- $15 per bottle, one for one; corkage is waived on wine purchased from PlumpJack wine shops. At Jack Falstaff, corkage is free on Sunday nights.

Tra Vigne (Napa) -- $19 per bottle; one for one. No corkage at the attached pizzeria.

Syrah (Santa Rosa) -- $15 per bottle, double if the bottle is already on the list, one for one.

Viognier (San Mateo) -- $20 per bottle, $50 if it's on the restaurant list, $15 if it comes from the wine shop in Draeger's downstairs, two bottle limit.

-- Amanda Gold

BYO etiquette

Bringing your own wine? Here are a few know-before-you-go tips.

Call ahead. Check with the restaurant to see what its

policy is.

Don't double up. Many restaurants won't allow you to bring in wine if it's already on their list. If they do, it's still in poor taste to do so. When you call ahead, check and see if they already list your bottle. If so, buy it off the list or bring another.

Share the wealth. Offer to pour a taste for the staff -- they'll appreciate it. Even Richard Reddington says that if bringing in wine was banned, he wouldn't get to taste the great things he can't carry, like an '82 Bordeaux.

Make it count. In other words, that $7.99 bottle that you grabbed from Safeway on the way to the restaurant is better left at home. Most wine lists will have at least a small selection of bottles that are affordable based on the entree prices. If you can find something comparable on the list, it's a nice idea to support the program. If not, at least bring a special bottle.

Go one for one. Most restaurants will waive corkage if you purchase an additional bottle from the list.

Tip well. Even if you bring a bottle, your server or sommelier will treat it as though you've purchased it off the list. Let your tip reflect that.